Normal Has Been Changed
by Jameson
Summary: Bob starts reading a strange README file and suddenly AndrAIa begins to get a sense of foreboding. Holes start appearing in the system. Mysterious power surges and tears appear. AndrAIa knows the book is the cause... now how to convince her friends bef


Normal has Been Changed...

AndrAIa ducked back behind the corridor wall as Bob passed by, an open README file in his hand. She waited until the file had disappeared with the guardian into the halls of the principle office before emerging. 

There was something evil about that file.

She snuck out of her hiding spot and up to Dot's office. The new had just moved in, placing pictures of her friends and family strategically around the room so that no matter where she looked she'd feel at ease and at peace. Kind of an individually crafted feng shui. AndrAIa popped in. "Dot, I need -" The green sprite looked up, as did her boyfriend who was sitting with the README file open on the couch. AndrAIa checked herself and turned her blue eyes gravely on her friend "-I need to speak with you in private for a minute"

"Sure, AndrAIa." She weaved around the desk. "I'll just be a second, Bob."

"Sure, whatever."

Once the door had closed the girls off from the office AndrAIa grabbed Dot's hand. "We've got to get that file away from Bob."

"What? Why?"

"Its bad." AndrAIa said. "I just feel it."

"Bad?" Dot looked over her shoulder to where she knew Bob was sitting on the other side of the wall. "Don't be ridiculous. It's just a book. I told him he should read more. He pulled it out of stored memory."

"I don't care where he got it." AndrAIa insisted. She took a deep breath. "Listen, I don't know how or why, but I'm just telling you there's something about that file that's evil. I can feel it all through the PO, everywhere he goes, everywhere he reads it there's an aura, like an ill omen, just asking for danger."

"You're a little paranoid, AndrAIa." Dot assured her. "How can something as innocent as a file be evil? A file is just DOS. Maybe you should take a rest."

Suddenly a hollow echo, like the rush of an invisible wind, passed through the halls around them. The sound was a song, or a snarl, or perhaps the sound of harpstrings disturbed by the breeze - off tune and sickeningly without beauty. AndrAIa hushed her voice to a whisper. "I can't lie about this. Something's not okay... there's a feeling in this place, Dot, a feeling that only appeared the nano Bob downloaded that file. Ignore it if you want... but I promise you... you will feel it too..."

It had been cycles since that README had appeared in Mainframe and AndrAIa was growing anxious. It seemed Bob carried the open file with him wherever he went and she suspected its contents were slowly taking hold of him. At the same time, the system had begun to act strangely. A rash of power surges had knocked out sectors of Baudway and Kits, GPrime was also experiencing downtime, but had been repaired thanks to some skillful rewiring skills on her part. To her it was uncanny, but she couldn't seem to convince any of her friends that the book was the cause.

When Mouse and Ray had entered Mainframe from their most recent off-system adventure, the game sprite was the first one they met.

"It's just a file, honey." Mouse insisted. 

"That's what everyone says." AndrAIa replied. "But I'm telling you the truth, things are behaving strangely and I feel that file is the cause."

Ray crossed his arms and studied her a minute. "You're not one to fly off the handle on something like this. If you're sure about this file, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt."

Her eyes brightened. "Really? Thank you guys so much, no one else believes me!"

Mouse put up a hand. "He said 'benefit of the doubt', but we'll help you, Sugar... how do you plan on investigating this?"

"I don't know." She admitted. "I think we should try to get a look at that file."

Mouse put her hands on her hips. "Have you confronted Bob about it?"

AndrAIa paused, "... well... no..." Ray 'hmphed', but she defended her actions before he could comment. "If Bob's corrupted it wouldn't do any good. You understand that the file might be making him do things? Using him to cause the power surges and take the system offline?"

"It sounds farfetched." Ray noted.

"All we've got to do is get it away from him somehow." AndrAIa puzzled. "Thing is, I haven't seen him put it down since the moment he opened it. Maybe it's clinging to him... Maybe the text in the file has brainwashed him so he can't leave it unattended. It would be a good survival tactic."

"Survival tactic for a README file?" Mouse asked.

"It'd be smart wouldn't it?"

Ray leaned on Mouse's shoulder. "The nano Bob calls this file 'Master' I'm checking out."

AndrAIa's sarcastic stare was interrupted by the familiar refrain of the system voice. A game was landing, she could see the datasky turn purple overhead. "Hey! This is perfect! He wouldn't take the file with him into the game!" 

The surfer cocked an eyebrow. "Even if its sucking his brain?"

She popped open her zipboard and rose up to make sure Bob was headed for the game. It was entirely possible the README would prevent him from going at all. Still, she felt it would take a lot to keep Bob from his protocol. Her two friends followed, exchanging a glance between them. 

Sure enough across the rooftops she could see Bob and Matrix headed for the game as it landed out by Lost Angles. Matrix spotted her and stopped mid air, shouting. "AndrAIa! Are you coming?"

"I think you can handle this one, Lover!" She called back. 

Bob wheeled around to face her. "You sure? It could be one of those melee games again, and you know how we _love_ those!" 

She laughed and waved goodbye, trying her best to appear unsuspicious. "You kids have fun." A quick scan revealed Bob had nothing in his hands and nothing minimized to his belt. The file was gone. This was her chance.

She turned to Mouse and Ray once the others were safely tucked away in the cube. "I've got an idea. Let's search Bob's apartment."

The search was lasting longer than AndrAIa had hoped, and she kept glancing out the open garage door for signs of the gamecube's retreat. Across the room, Mouse was pulling open cabinet doors. "I don't think it's here, Sugar."

"It has to be." She resolved, going back to the area around Bob's worktable. "It must be."

Ray kicked a couch cushion back into place. "Sorry, love, its not here."

AndrAIa swept tools aside in frustration then noticed something in the corner of the room. A staircase.

"Hey, that wasn't there before was it?"

The staircase was not only new, it appeared to be of a different construction than the rest of the apartment – all wires and clockwork. It only took two steps down to convince AndrAIa that it didn't belong.

"Are we going in?" Ray asked over her shoulder. He and his girlfriend peered under the low doorframe into the rapidly darkening corridor. AndrAIa swallowed before looking to each of them for some sort of unspoken advice. 

She shouldn't have expected much, these two thrived on adventure, and in any other situation she would have felt the same way, but the negative emotion hovering down the short staircase and extending walkway turned her stomach. Her better sense and adaptive intelligence told her otherwise, but she nodded and led her friends into the shadow.

Even with the exposed wiring and bundled cords stretching like veins down the length of the vanishing hallway, the game sprite could see no light switch or bulb anywhere near the door. When she stepped foot down on the crosshatched steel landing her heel echoed rapidly into the gloom as if it were being sucked in by some strange auditory vacuum. She paused for a second to test the affects of the resulting silence, then stepped further into the tunnel, allowing Mouse and Ray to join her. 

Having other sprites there made it less frightening, but she couldn't help feeling crowded. The ceiling was low, and the walkway hung like a catwalk in the center of a pipe. Mouse whistled as she looked around, the note vanishing with AndrAIa's footsteps back into the void. "This is strange."

Ray welled up a fistful of energy to light their path and the three of them continued tentatively inward.

AndrAIa could feel the aura gathering thickly now. It was the same feeling she got when she saw Bob reading that file, the same evil force that had whispered voices through the halls of the Principle Office, yet here it was concentrated down into a narrow tube of discontent. Perhaps this was where he was hiding it. 

Perhaps this was where it lived.

A new mission on her mind, she regained a certain boldness to her pace. Wherever this dark hallway led, she was sure she'd find that open document at the end. It was just a matter of where the end was, if there even was one.

They kept walking until the light of Mainframe had contracted into a speck behind them, the walls illuminated by Surfr's eerie blue glow bowed their shadows in curves on either side. Initially, Mouse had enthusiastically investigated the coiled wires, trying to figure out their purpose, but now she passed them with nary a glance. She was more intent on the series of intricate gears that were growing thicker and thicker behind pipe's nervous system. She tapped Ray's shoulder and whispered to him, her voice vanishing ahead of them. "Have you taken a good look at this stuff?"

"Yeah, shouldn't it be moving?"

AndrAIa was focused straight ahead, staring at a horizon shrouded in black. Ray's light seemed to build a bubble around them gathering the blackness into a concave wall just out of reach. The ever present aura might as well have turned to a tangible mist around her.

After microseconds of walking straight ahead with no sign of file or end, Mouse looked over her shoulder. Their entrance had vanished nearly completely, if it even remained at all. There was no telling how much time had passed down there, the game most certainly had left by now, it could even be a night cycle as far as she could tell. She felt the urge to leave. Ray was in no mood to argue, piping his energy into his fist all this time had exhausted him, and he was more than ready to head back. It was AndrAIa that needed convincing.

"We can't go back now!" She insisted. "This might be the only chance we get to find that file."

"We aren't going to find it in here, Sugar." Mouse told her, pointedly. "It's insane to think Bob would walk this far back to drop a file and still make it to the game cube before it hit. Whatever this place is, it's not going to help us any as we are."

"But-" AndrAIa protested again. "I can feel that sense. The one I told you about when that README is open. I've never felt it stronger than down here, it's as if it comes from down here. This could be the source of its power."

"Or the power made this place on its own." Ray said. "And with that marvelous transition, I say we go grab an energy shake."

"How can you think of food in a place like this?" AndrAIa cried.

He pointed to his elevated hand. "Yes?"

She looked from him to Mouse and sighed. She didn't want to stay in this place alone, and no matter how close or far they were from whatever end they were trying to reach she knew she'd have to give up the journey for now. In any case, she could return with better equipment and maybe Frisket along for safety. "Okay. We go back."

Mouse nodded, looking strangely relieved letting AndrAIa take the lead again as they retraced their steps. "Good call, Sugar, this place is starting to give me the creeps."

When they resurfaced in Bob's apartment no time had passed. The game cube still rippled in the corner of the garage-view, and the system seemed to be functioning normally. AndrAIa could have dismissed the macros they'd spent in that tunnel as a passing dream or figment of her imagination if it wasn't for Ray, who dropped his arm and collapsed against the wall the minute they were out. They hadn't calculated the time it took them to get back; he had given everything he had. Mouse kneeled down next to him as his wetsuit flicked on and off before resetting itself in his normal ocean-dappled pattern. 

The flame-haired sprite looked over her shoulder at the opening, then up to AndrAIa. "Okay, honey, something weird's going on around here. I'm ready to buy anything you say. What are we going to do next?"

"I don't know." AndrAIa admitted. "There may be something wrong with the system. I mean, logically that hallway shouldn't even exist. It extends much farther back than this apartment building is wide, and I'll bet there aren't any strange projections sticking out the back. Maybe it's some sort of computation error." 

"It could be an infinite data loop." Mouse offered. "That would explain the neverending-ness in there, but I've never seen such an anomaly manifest itself into a tube like that."

"We'll have to check the status at the PO again." AndrAIa resolved. "Then maybe bring some more sophisticated scanners up here to check it out." She turned, seeming more positive, the clean air almost sparkled in contrast to the feeling she'd been saturated with in the tunnel. She focused a smile on Ray and pulled him up off the floor by the hand. "But first we'll get you a recharge."

"Sounds good."

…

Matrix found the three of them in a booth at Dot's Diner. He saluted Mouse and Ray as he slid in next to AndrAIa. "When'd you guys get back?"

"Just now." Mouse said, realizing that minus the time they'd spent in the phantom pipeline they'd only been in Mainframe for a micro or more.

AndrAIa clung to his arm, the euphoria of being free from the tunnel still lingering on her. "What kind of game was it?"

"Easy stuff." He replied. "It was that shooting game, you know the fire-arrow one from when we left that one green system? I was a god there."

She laughed. "I remember."

Ray sucked out the end of his shake before posing a casual question. "Where's Bob." 

AndrAIa's gut bottomed out as she suddenly remembered all her anxiety. She looked briefly over her shoulder out the window in case he might be standing there with that file in his hand. Matrix shrugged. "He headed back to the PO I think, that or his apartment. He's been a real recluse lately, it's not like him."

"He's got a new book." AndrAIa said a little bitterly. 

Matrix shook his head. "Are you still on that, AndrAIa? I thought we'd talked you out of that paranoia." He looked to the sprites seated across from them. "Have you heard this story she's been telling? You don't believe her do you?"

Ray started. "Well we-"

"I haven't told them yet." AndrAIa interrupted. "I figure they'd just laugh at me like everyone else." She unlooped her arm and nudged him in the side. "Up. I want out."

He slid aside and she turned for the door. "I'll see you guys later okay?"

Matrix scratched his head as he watched her take off for the center of the system. "Was it something I said?"

Ray whispered to Mouse. "Why'd she lie?"

His girlfriend shrugged.

Alone in the War Room, AndrAIa scanned feverishly for an explanation. That phantom hallway in Bob's apartment was growing steadily more frightening, and the thought of returning to it both engaged and appalled her. For the love of her friends and her home she had to get down to the bottom of this… but in her heart she dreaded diving back into that world of dank premonition.

As she re-scanned Kit's sector again she got a chill all over. The faint sound of swirling dust hit her sensitive ears followed by the opening of the War Room doors. She turned to find Bob standing there. He smiled at her. "Here you are! We've been looking all over for you."

Her throat knotted. That file was open in his hand.

"We're going to the diner for a bite. You should come! It'll be fun."

"I-" She felt the adrenaline urge to flee and backed up onto the console. "I don't know."

"Come on, AndrAIa." Bob pleaded. "Mouse and Ray just got back. I want to hear about where they've been and what they've done. They always come back with the best stories."

"No, Bob, I think I'll just stay here." She insisted.

His brown eyes adopted a concerned look. He stepped closer to comfort her, but she just pushed herself away, hitting buttons on console and halting the scan. A light flashed behind her head. He leaned around. "What are you doing here anyway?"

"Nothing." She said quickly. "Just some research, it's really important, I can't leave it for a nanosecond."

He paused, a little hurt by her tenseness. He thought he'd always been trustworthy. Yet the look in her eye was fearful and wary no matter how hard she was trying to hide it. He drew back and headed for the stairs. "If you change your mind…"

"I know where you are." She nodded. "Have a good time."

The doors closed behind him but that aura still remained. It seemed to lay like a trail wherever he or that file went. She was positive, now, that the hallway and the README were directly related. Still the newfound coldness in that room spoiled her concentration and she had to leave the War Room to conduct her business elsewhere. She walked the halls of the PO looking for some dark corner where Bob had not visited. Strangely enough, she found herself at Phong's office.

"What is troubling you, My child?"

"Nothing, Phong," AndrAIa lied. "Why would you think that?"

He fiddled with his glasses. "Child, you cannot hide that well."

She sighed, "to be honest, Phong, do you feel something weird around here? A sense of danger?"

He seemed bewildered. "I do not feel any different."

She sat down on his couch. "I thought as much."

"But," he wheeled over to her, "that does not necessarily mean there is nothing wrong." She looked up, her eyes hopeful. He spoke very seriously to her. "You are unique, my child. As a game sprite, your intelligence is constantly evolving to match the conditions in which you find yourself. It is possible that your adaptive senses can register things that ours cannot. If this is the case, you must be careful and attentive to what you feel. If only you can feel the danger, that might be the danger to us all."

AndrAIa nodded. "You're right Phong, Mainframe needs me." She stood up. "I'm going back. I need a remote system scanner, a high-intensity flashlight and energy for the trip. What can you hook me up with?"

He gave her a knowing look and led her out into the hall.

"You and Frisket are going WHERE?" Little Enzo cried.

"We're going to Bob's apartment." AndrAIa told him. "But you can't come."

Enzo was disappointed that she'd anticipated his question. "But, I've been to Bob's apartment loads of times! What are you two gonna do that's so secret?"

"If I told you, it wouldn't be a secret." AndrAIa pointed out. "Just do me a favor and don't ask."

"You're not being fair." Enzo whined. 

AndrAIa pushed his cap down over his face. "Fair doesn't count with grownups lil' Sparky. If I tell you to stay you stay."

"No fair playing the 'grownup' card!"

AndrAIa readjusted her backpack and got out her zip board. "Come on, Frisket, let's go."

Enzo wasn't ready to give up yet. He wanted to be included, but even more so, he wanted to be considered as brave and responsible as his older self. He ran up to stand in front of her again. "But I can help!"

"No, Enzo, it's too dangerous."

"In Bob's apartment?"

AndrAIa decided to try lying again. Well, a lie with a half-truth. "Okay, you got me. I'm not really going to Bob's Apartment."

Enzo crossed his arms, quite proud of his sleuthing self. "That's what I thought!"

She loomed over him. "I'm going somewhere dark and creepy. Somewhere no one else has ever been. That's why I'm bringing Frisket, just in case there's some dark and scary monster going to eat me!"

The young sprite shook his head. "You don't lie that well, AndrAIa."

"But it's true, I am going somewhere dark and scary." She defended. "And I don't feel comfortable with you coming along." She squatted down and pinched his cheeks. "Its because I love you."

"Aw." He backed out of her grip. "Don't get mushy in front of Frisket." The dog raised his ears.

"Do you understand why you can't go now?" AndrAIa asked.

"Sure, fine, you win." He conceded. "But what should I do instead? You're stealing my only playmate." Frisket wagged his stubby tail.

The sea sprite got an idea. "Bob, Dot, and Matrix are hanging out with Surfr and Mouse over at the diner! Why don't you go hang with them?"

"Mouse and Surfr are back?" His violet eyes lit up. "Alphanumeric! They always have the best stories! Maybe they got me something!" He threw open his zip board and sped off. "Seeya AndrAIa!"

She waved and watched him go. "And to think Matrix was once that easily distracted." She looked down to her canine friend. "Come on, Frisket, let's go find something dark and scary."

….

Enzo skidded to a stop outside the diner and barged in to find everyone hanging out in two booths, Mouse and Ray on either side of the divider recounting tails of high adventure. Bob put his README down when Enzo entered. "Hey! Where have you been?"

"Me and Frisket were checking out G Prime." Enzo answered. "Since the powerdown all sorts of cool glitches and errors have showed up. Here," he dug in his pocket and pulled out a notepad. "I wrote down where all the tears were, Bob! So you can go mend them. Petty Guardian like don't you think?"

"Sure is." He smiled. "You'll be a first rate protector of the city before you know it!"

Matrix shook his head. He'd had the same dream at that age, but he never got to the academy. "It's going to be a pain when my little clone outranks me."

Enzo swelled with pride then waved to Mouse and Ray. "Hi guys! Welcome back! What'd I miss?"

"We were telling about how we saved an entire system from crashing using nothing but good common sense and about fifty megatons of raw energy." Mouse answered, winking at him. "It was a narrow escape, but nothin' Ray and I couldn't handle."

"Wow! What'd you do?"

She and her boyfriend exchanged amused glances over the partition and she leaned back against the wall, crossing her legs over the length of the seat. "The system was decompiling because of an operating system error, so we drilled a hole into the core and constructed a huge funnel out of scrap metal, then pumped energy from the sea into the heart and voila! Instant recharge. Everything snapped back into place as good as new."

Ray nodded. "They got a statue of us now, right in the middle of town. Called us their Heroes."

She took his hand, threading her fingers into his. "All in a day's work."

Dot smiled. The two of them were really knitting together thanks to all these adventures. It made her happy to see two friends in love. She looked to Bob but found him reading again. It seemed that new file he'd downloaded never ended. She scooted a little closer trying to attract his attention but it didn't help, he just read on.

"Oh." Ray remembered something and reached back to his belt. "We got somethin' for you, mate."

"Wow?" Enzo was ecstatic. "Really?"

He tossed the boy a capsule-like box as big as a deck of playing cards. Enzo unfolded it to find a screen and input pad. An antenna slid out of the top with a whirligig rotating at its end. Mouse took the opportunity to explain. "All the kids in Alt745 use those. They've got all kinds of gadgets in there, a magnifying glass, a file cutter, a notepad. All you do is punch in the right sequence and out it pops. It's like your own personal keytool, Sugar."

"Wow! That's awesome!" He punched in some numbers and the whirligig was replaced with a pair of scissors. Another combination produced a whistle. Yet another caused it to sprout legs and stand like a tripod. "Alphanumeric! This is the best thing ever! Bob? Did you see?"

Bob was oblivious to the whole thing. Matrix eyed him suspiciously as he scrolled down on the README. Dot had to jab him in the ribs to get his attention. "What? Oh, that's great Enzo!"

"Maybe I'll name it and use it in games!" Enzo said. He suddenly dashed off to the back room. "I'm gonna go find a way to strap it to my wrist!"

Mouse looked to Ray. "Told you he'd love it." The surfer laughed and she addressed the rest of them. "We got stuff for you all too, but you'll have to come back to Ship for that, I couldn't make my sprite carry everything on him."

Suddenly Enzo's voice split the space. "DOT!"

The could sense a level of panic in his tone. She jumped to her feet. Enzo was standing on the other side of the Diner, pressed against the wall. Between them the bar had grown tendon-like wires that snaked down from the polished surface into the hollow in the middle. The five of them quickly rushed over to see, Bob leaving the file open and neglected on the table. Dot's face turned chalk white. "What in the Net?"

The middle of the diner had become a bottomless pit, a well extending straight down into darkness without explanation. Cecil coasted madly toward her. "Madmoiselle? It was not my fault! I turned my back and then it appeared! Pardonnes moi!"

"Its okay Cecil, just…" She couldn't formulate the words, she just stared blankly into the mysterious hole in her floor. 

Matrix attempted to climb up onto the bar but Mouse stopped him. She and Ray knew what this was. "Don't do in there, Sugar, not yet."

"Why? Matrix asked. "Is it dangerous? Do you know something you're not telling us?"

She looked to Ray who shrugged and shook his head. She decided to bare all. "We've seen this kind of hole before. We think it's a flaw in the system. AndrAIa was…"

"You've seen another one of these in Mainframe?" Bob cried. "Why didn't you tell us?"

Ray offered to explain. "But AndrAIa was-"

"If you know something spit it out!" Matrix roared. 

"Please!" Dot silenced them looked gravely to Mouse and Ray. "Explain everything."

They'd walked for nearly a second. At least that was what it seemed like. Her watch wasn't working down the dark tunnel. Frisket sniffed at cogs and gadgets along the way, but everything smelled about the same to him; dank and aged. AndrAIa was just glad the hallway was still there. She half expected it to have vanished without a trace while she was gone. She took a swig from her thermos and cast her light about in front of her as they continued on. "We could be down here forever, Frisket."

The dog raised his ears and whimpered a little, the sound sucked forward into the black.

She smiled and patted his head. "Don't worry, when we get out 'forever' won't mean a thing. I was down here before. This passageway seems to drop right out of space and time." She cast her lamp backwards to see where she'd come. The crosshatched catwalk stretched to oblivion, the light of Mainframe long since vanished into black. "We just have to get out, that's all."

Frisket growled. She threw the light around in front of her again. The place was unchanged, still, the hair on Frisket's neck was standing up. She began to get a sick, sinking feeling. "What's wrong, Frisket?" Her voice echoed more slowly now. "What's going on?"

Suddenly her ears caught the barrel of sound rushing out at her. A disharmony of wind, reeds, tall grass, growls, gasps and sobs. She threw her hands up to cover her face, the sound waves kicking up a ferocious wind as they charged past. Mixed in them she could hear every word she'd said garbled together with the voices of her friends and sounds of life. The decibals rose. She covered her ears. Frisket huddled on the floor stomping his ears shut. Nanos passed and the sound did not fade. As a matter of fact, it strengthened intensity until AndrAIa found herself tilting backward from the force. Frisket took the initiative. His ears plastered to his neck, he grabbed AndrAIa's backpack in his teeth and ran with her. The flashlight clattered to the floor and vanished steadily into darkness. The sea sprite watched it recede, her legs flailing and her hands still pinned to her head. Before it was too far away she saw it flicker and die.

Frisket trusted his sense of direction to race him on through the black. The sound continued to roar about the tunnel, ricocheting off the gears and trembling the wires. He suddenly clipped a pole and tumbled onto the grated floor, his fur scraping. AndrAIa could feel the floor drop out from under her and clung with her hands and feet to stay on the catwalk. Her ears rang until she was sure they were bleeding. No sooner had she hit than Frisket had found her again, running again, straight on. When they reached the staircase and emerged into the light of Bob's garage the silence was so pure it was deafening.

In fact, when Matrix popped up via vidwindow a micro later she could barely hear what he was saying.

"AndrAIa? Where are you?"

She took a nano to couple his distant voice with the movements of his lips. Her ears were ringing painfully. The sound of her own voice in her head made them throb. "I'm right here… what's wrong?"

"Good, at least you're okay. Get over here fast. There's a hole in the diner."

She was sure she hadn't heard that right. "A hole? In the diner?"

"It sounds random but its true. Mouse and Surfr say you've been in one before. Dot thinks you should be here. Hurry up, okay?"

"Right, fine, the diner." AndrAIa said. "Give me a nano." The window closed

She looked down to Frisket who was licking a wound on his leg and whimpering. She crawled over to him and used supplies from her discarded bag to clean and wrap his injury. She whispered even though she knew his ears were ringing as much as hers. "Sorry Frisket."

As she flew across the system, a block of Baudway began to flicker and go out. The power surges were knocking sectors off line again and she wondered if Bob was somewhere cutting wires according to the directions in his book. She was surprised when she found the Guardian with everyone else staring dumbly down the shaft.

"AndrAIa!" Dot cried, rushing over to her. "Thank goodness you're here!"

"Shhh." She warned, shielding her ears. "Quieter."

Enzo looked up to her. "Did you go someplace dark and scary?"

She nodded. "And loud."

"AndrAIa." Mouse weaved through the crowd and grabbed her wrist. "Back us up, Sugar, this looks like the same thing in Bob's apartment right?"

Bob whirled around. "Wait-? There's one of these in MY apartment?"

Mouse nearly folded AndrAIa over the bar. "See that?"

The sea sprite got a chill. That nasty aura was spewing out of this hole like an evil fountain. This diner had been a place she'd felt safe and happy just micros before and now it was infected with that heavy musk she'd grown to detest as well as fear. She shoved herself up and away from the bar. "Its the same. And that one probably doesn't end either."

"So you went back in?" Ray asked. He read her answer in a glance. "I knew you would."

"What'd you find?" Mouse pressed.

"Nothing," she answered bitterly, "a long winding nothing and then everything all at me at once. I think that tunnel chased me out, Mouse, I think it was screaming at me to leave. Maybe it has a consciousness all its own, but Frisket and I tore out of there as fast as we could. It ejected us."

"Wait wait wait…" Bob interrupted, absentmindedly scooping the file from the table where he'd left it. "There's one of these in my HOUSE?"

AndrAIa caught sight of the file and gagged. She couldn't handle all this right now, not after what she'd experienced in the tunnel. On impulse she shoved him aside and tore out of the diner. Matrix followed closely. "AndrAIa, hold on!"

Bob was turned around. "But- Wha?- Huh?"

Dot shrugged. Mouse and Ray focused on the README in his hand, wondering.

….

AndrAIa hadn't gone far before Matrix caught her. He grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. "Would you mind telling me what's going on?"

She was emotionally and physically exhausted. Her body had been running for over a second without rest, even though in Mainframe it was still the middle of the day cycle. She surrendered and collapsed into his chest. "I don't know what's going on! Its so strange and confusing!"

"AndrAIa…" He took a moment to hold her tight, then revisited her troubles. "You went in that hole at Bob's right? That's what's got you so worked up?"

"Yes I went in it." She said through her teeth. "I went deeper in it than anyone could imagine and I still didn't find anything. It's all so surreal. It's so dark and evil down there, Lover, it's… Its just bad."

"Well, you don't have to go back." Matrix said. "Bob and I'll go. We'll figure out what's causing this mess."

"I know what's causing it." AndrAIa said, pulling back. "It's that file that's causing it! Bob may be oblivious but it's using him to ruin this system!" Matrix diverted his eyes. She grabbed onto his shirt. "You've got to believe me!"

"I just don't see how one README file could cause something as big as holes in the system. Just by being read? It's really hard to accept."

"Hard or not it's the truth." She said, tears in her eyes. "You mean the most to me, you have to understand."

"This is really upsetting you." He said. "Come on, I'll take you home. You can get some rest and then things will be better in the morning."

"No they wont." She said darkly. "They'll be worse. As long as that THING is in the city all it can do is get worse. And I'm the only one who can stop it."

"Why do you say that?" Matrix asked.

"Because I'm the only one who feels it." She said. "You all don't believe me because you can't feel how evil that thing is, but I do. I feel it thick and gritty like tar in the air. When I breathe it it turns my lungs black. The smoke follows that file around like some sort of stain in the world. It lingers long after its gone like gunk on the walls. If you felt it you'd believe me. You'd see how Mainframe's being infected with it, then you'd see I'm right."

"Infected?" Matrix repeated. He chewed on the word. He'd been to many systems and seen many different types of viruses that worked at different levels and in different ways. They'd had a Trojan horse virus in Mainframe before, maybe what AndrAIa was saying wasn't as random as it sounded. "Okay, I'll give it a shot. Maybe there is something wrong with that file, but I think you're giving it more credit than it deserves." She made to protest but he held her firmly. "We'll investigate it tomorrow. Together. But right now you're in a bad way. You need to log off for a while, okay? Will you do that?"

She stared at him a moment, but finally gave up. She was depleted, and ill, and didn't want to fight anymore. Instead she let her lover carry her up into the sky as she slowly dropped off to sleep on his shoulder.

When she awoke the next cycle it sent chills down her spine. She knew she shouldn't have taken the time for herself. Her home sector was now offline. Nothing in their apartment worked, she couldn't even open a vidwindow there in this state. Nothing to do but hoof it. Climbing out of bed, she pried open the front doors and took the stairs down to the cold lifeless street. It took her three times as long to reach the edge of the sector than it would have by zip board. Tears gathered like spectral sentinels on the border. The first thing she did once in energized space was open a zip board and shoot off for the Principle Office.

….

Meanwhile, at the Diner, the other sprites had begun to investigate their new space. 

"AndrAIa said it doesn't lead anywhere." Matrix said, tightening a rope around his waist. "Well, I don't think that's the case. Everything has to go somewhere. I'm going to find out where this hole leads."

"Trust us, Sugar, it leads nowhere." Mouse assured him from where she was seated on the bar between two great tendrils of wire. "It'll just keep going down and down for eternity."

"There's no such thing as an eternal distance." Dot said, rationally. "Even the Net has borders."

"They' haven't found an end to the Web yet." Ray reminded her. "And besides, we're speaking from experience. We've been in one of these holes, they don't turn or bend or change for miles and when you come out it's like no time has passed at all."

"Good, then you guys won't have to wait long." Matrix resolved. He opened his zip board and hovered over the entrance to the hole. Hack and Slash held the other end of his lifeline, which looped through a pulley dangling directly over the expanse. Frisket whimpered from the door. Matrix unclipped his gun and signaled to those on the ground. "You'll be seeing me sooner than I'll be seeing you."

"Don't fall, now." Bob warned. "Forever is a long drop."

He grinned, "Seeya'round," and lowered himself down into the well. 

Dot began to wring her hands and pace. "I don't like this at all."

…

Four more subsectors had dropped off the map overnight. AndrAIa rerouted power through working networks to resupply the city but she knew it was only temporary. Even as she finished wiring Kits and Baudway entire levels of Floating Point blacked out. It was an uphill battle that she felt like she was waging alone. "Shouldn't Dot and Bob be here doing this with me?" She asked out loud. "Cursors, Mouse alone could get this place running. Why am I the only one who seems to care?"

She sent Floating Point some energy from G Prime and supported that with backup supplies from the residential sectors. An alert sounded as more tears opened up around the city. Bob still hadn't done anything about those lingering in the industrial levels from the last day cycle. He was seriously neglecting his guardian duties and the stability of the system was suffering. "Too busy reading." She muttered, and left the War Room to find Phong. 

Surprisingly, he was not in his office, which was still the only place in the building that didn't reek of negative forces. To quicken her search she sat at his deck and pulled up a building scan. She noticed a level of the PO was misbehaving. "That's strange." She pulled up the statistics. "A power drainage. Dot's office is on that level, maybe she left her Java maker on or something." She shut the screen down and left the room. "I bet Phong went to check it out."

The closer she got to the drainage the more nauseous she became. The air was full of the evil thickness, growing worse and worse the further she got. She began, again, to hear whispers in the hallways. "I've got a bad feeling about this."

She stumbled as she neared Dot's door. Her ears plugged up. It felt as if the pressure in the hall had changed. While confused, she dismissed it as the aftereffects of her adventures the day before and forged on. Standing against the wall outside Dot's office she paused. Her gut told her she didn't want to go in there. All the negative forces were concentrated on that room and she was afraid of becoming violently ill, fainting, or turning inside out should she step foot inside. She couldn't understand why she felt it so strongly. "Is it because Bob spends so much time in here?" She asked herself. "Or maybe… maybe he left it in here. Maybe the file is sitting on Dot's desk right now spewing this nastiness out of it." She pressed her face to the door. It seemed cold to the touch. "But Bob never leaves it unattended. Except to go in the game he always had it with him. There's something…." She gave up explaining things to herself and decided to go in, after all, she was worried about Phong. Without a sixth sense about the aura he might of gotten himself in trouble. All her friends were in danger now, it was her duty to make sure they stayed safe. She pressed the latch to open the door.

Once open a rush of air pushed past her, sucking her into the room. A massive tunnel, the same as before only twice as large, had opened behind Dot's desk. Its wires were stretching out from the gaping mouth like fingers grasping at the walls. The sound of wails tore past her to the tune of grinding metal. The sounds were instantly swallowed by that insidious vacuum. The Game Sprite clung fast to the doorframe to keep from being dragged in. The wires on the far wall were exposed, sparking and sending flashes of light swiftly into the black hole. As she held fast, the lamp by her head was ripped from the wall trailing the same frayed cords and leaving the charged ends flailing. AndrAIa pulled herself back out into the hall where the gravity was less intense and called into the room. "Phong? Phong are you in there?"

It was a futile attempt. As she cried, Dot's mounted pictures were sucked off the wall. One of she and Bob shattered against the heavy wood of the desk before being swallowed. In moments the desk itself was being pulled across the floor. The Game Sprite closed the door and fell backwards, the intense pull of gravity stopped.

She sat in the hall in the midst of that dark aura, her heart racing. For all she could tell Phong was long gone, the strength of that opening was increasing, and before she knew it walls of the room would become victims. This was not the job for one sprite. She needed help. She needed a better plan. Madly she rushed from the PO and out into the city to find her friends.

The first place to find anybody in Mainframe was Dot's Diner so that was where AndrAIa went. She threw open the door with a crash and made everyone jump. Dot was closest to her so she clung, the fish sprite behaving a little erratically in her moment of panic. "There's a hole! In your office! I think it got Phong! It's sucking everything in! We've gotta go!"

"Phong? What?" Dot cried. Her head was spinning now too, she didn't quite grasp the full affect of the moment. "But we cant… Matrix-"

"Where's Matrix?" AndrAIa's eyes widened. Her grip tightened on Dot's arms. "Where is he? What's happened?"

"He's down there." She said, smarting from the pain in her grip.

AndrAIa blanched and threw her friend aside on her way to the bar. "Matrix?" She climbed up next to Mouse to stare into the hole. The safety rope dangled down into darkness. "MATRIX!"

Mouse put her hand on her friend's shoulder. "Calm down, AndrAIa!"

She flung her off. "How'd you let him go? You know what's down there! He said we'd investigate together! He said together! Why didn't he wait for me?" She shouted down the well again. "MATRIX!"

"Hold on, AndrAIa, backspace a nano." Bob interrupted. "What'd you say about a hole in Dot's office? Did you say it ate Phong?"

She raised her nails at him and climbed further onto the bar. "You stay away from me. You're the cause of it. All of it. Just stay back or I'll spike you."

Dot rushed in. "AndrAIa!"

She turned to the hole. "I'm going in after him. I'm not letting the darkness get him too."

"AndrAIa, hold on." Mouse beckoned. "He'll be back in a nano! Just calm down!"

She ignored the hacker and made to jump when suddenly that sound picked up again. The rest of them covered their ears and the howl of their surprised yelps was flushed down the hole in a whirlwind. The suction kicked in and AndrAIa was pulled from the bar, clinging to the rope to keep from vanishing altogether. Hack and Slash strained to hold on, but even their combined strength couldn't keep them from slipping along the tiled floor. 

Ray bounded up on the bar and offered AndrAIa his hand. "Grab on!"  
The surfer wasn't immune to the force, so Bob grabbed him by the other hand. Mouse took Bob around the waist and braced herself against a barstool. AndrAIa didn't budge.

She had half a mind to let go and be sucked in after Matrix. He was still attached. She'd be with him in half a nano… but the line gave a violent jerk as Hack and Slash's grip began to fail. If she let go now there'd be no way out. She and Matrix would fall together until they deleted from lack of energy. As bittersweet and romantic as that sounded, Phong's words came back to her. She was the only one who could save the system. The rope jerked again, she felt her hair whipping in her eyes, she heard the yawn of the world as it was pulled down the vortex. In an instant she released the rope and grabbed Ray's hand.

He pulled her up into the firm grip of his arm. She smashed her eyes shut and held tight to his neck. They, Bob and Mouse collapsed backwards to the floor as the rope snapped from the pulley and vanished without a trace into the void. AndrAIa burst into heartbroken tears, laying atop the pile of her friends as they stared helplessly at the ceiling. Matrix was gone. He was gone. The nothingness had stolen her lover.

"Matrix is missing in action and Phong is nowhere to be found." Dot strafed in front of the others as they stood gathered in the War Room. AndrAIa was uncomfortable knowing that there was a gaping black hole not two levels above them, the entire building flooded with negative emotion. 

What did it matter anyway? She was filled with sorrow and anger. The holes in the system took Matrix from her. She wasn't going to let that slide.

"I still think it's an Infinite Data Loop." Mouse said. "A small flaw in the system appearing as a hole that continues to repeat itself forever. These openings probably all stem from the same malfunction and they wont stop until the code is repaired."

"I've seen If…Then…Else loops before." Bob volunteered. "Never outside of games though. They usually result in a total crash."

"That's not going to happen here." Dot resolved. She looked to Mouse. "What would have caused this?"

"Many things, a loose variable, a line of unfinished code, an erroneous process, it could be anything."

"Whatever it is," AndrAIa said firmly, "it has everything to do with that file Bob has in his hand right now!" 

The guardian looked up sharply. He'd drifted back into reading again. "My file?"

"Yes your file." AndrAIa said. "This is what I've been talking about for seconds! If you all had believed me we could have done something by now and Matrix would still be here."

"We know you're upset, AndrAIa, we all are." Dot reasoned. "But, no matter what you feel, you can't blame yourself for it. We can't change the past. All we can do is try our best to fix the system and look for a way to bring our friends back to us."

"Let's start by studying that file." Mouse said, reaching for it. "AndrAIa has a point after all."

Bob pulled it away. "But it's just a README! And I'm not done with it yet!"

"Bob." Dot said sternly. He clutched the open file to his chest and she loomed over him. "Give me the file."

"No!"

"GIVE ME THE FILE!"

He slapped it down on the table and she slid it to Mouse. "You start on that."

"Right." The Hacker got up to leave. 

AndrAIa caught her arm. "And don't read it! It might possess you too."

"I'm not possessed!" Bob cried.

Mouse looked amused and waved goodbye to him with the open file. "Bye Sugar."

Enzo and Frisket passed her on the way in. "What's with the emergency meeting?"

Dot stopped herself. They'd neglected to inform Enzo that his older brother had been taken when they messaged him, and none of them wanted to do it now. He stood there confused for a moment until their resident optimist gave him an explanation.

"We're trying to find a way to plug up these holes." Ray said. "Matrix tried before, but it didn't work. We're trying to think of something else."

"I can ask Theta to scan it!" Enzo volunteered.

Bob stopped pouting and looked over. "Who's Theta?"

"My Keytool!" Enzo said, holding up his wrist where his present was strapped on with tape. "I named it Theta."

"Really?" Bob asked.

Enzo cocked an eyebrow. "What?"

Bob shrugged. "I dunno, I guess I was just expecting something 'edgier' from you."

"Nope, Theta works fine." Enzo said. "I can tell it to scan by pressing in these buttons and…" A rotating disk popped out of the top.

Dot couldn't help but smile. "Thanks anyway, Enzo, but I don't know if that will do any good."

"I've already taken a lot of readings from inside the tunnel at Bob's apartment." AndrAIa suggested. "I haven't gotten a chance to go over those."

"I haven't gotten a chance to see this hole in my house." Bob said. "I'm interested to see that."

"Lets go over what we've got, first." Dot resolved. "Then we'll start to take more readings. Hopefully Mouse will find something in the file that can be of some use."

"What was in that file anyway?" Ray asked. "You seemed to be addicted to it."

"Its just a story." Bob said. "A novel. About normal people doing normal stuff. Nothing evil!"

"Well, whatever it is, it's adversely affecting the system." AndrAIa said, darkly. "And I'm not swaying from that belief. Mouse is going to find all we need to know in that file, I'm sure of it."

AndrAIa paged through her findings. Most of the readings were either blank or off the scale. She figured the space in the tunnel caused the scanner to malfunction the same way it had confused her watch. It just wasn't a natural place.

Dot walked over to her console. "Any luck?"

She shook her head. "Nothing useful. It read that huge burst of sound easy enough."

"Any trace of code corruption?" 

"Not that I can see." AndrAIa answered. "Of course, I'm limited by what this machine actually recorded."

Dot sighed. "Well, keep trying."

"I want to go in the hole!" Enzo cried. Frisket covered his ears again at the memory. Enzo didn't understand. "What's wrong boy?"

"He doesn't want you to go." AndrAIa said. "He didn't have good time."

"Well, I don't care." Enzo said, pointedly. "I think I can help. I'll get Theta to scan it."

"Maybe Enzo has a point." Bob offered. "Maybe we should go back in with better equipment and try again."

"No one else is going in any of these holes." Dot resolved. "I'm not loosing any more people to this thing."

Ray crossed his arms. "Taking a little risk is better than not doing anything at all."

She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed. "We'll wait to hear what Mouse has found."

As if on cue, the Hacker came back in with the README and a file folder. "Okay, here's what I've got."

They gathered around. Mouse plugged the folder into the War Room projector and cast the scrolling data up on the screen. "I was right. There's a loose variable in this file. It's disguised within the text but it is declared early on."

AndrAIa was glad to have her theory finally proven right. Dot was still confused. "But how could a variable declared in a README file affect the system? READMEs are just documents."

"This one's different." Mouse said. "The file is written with an encryption that makes the variable active when it is read. Bob's registered to the core, so when he read the file it used his code to declare the variable act on the system."

"Wow." Bob said. "That's really scary. I've never heard of such a file. There should be some record of them in the Supercomputer, and it would be a handy lesson to teach at the academy."

"This is the first file of this type I've come across." Mouse announced. "It makes me think that its one of a kind. Most likely it was written in Mainframe and stored in the system library without anyone knowing."

"Who could have written such a tricky document?" Ray asked. "Sounds like something you'd do Mouse."

She winked at him. "Sounds like fun. It'd be a real challenge, the encryption exists in the lines of text… the frequency of certain letters, page breaks, punctuation… it would take a brilliant mathematician, not to mention an innovative programmer and talented author."

Enzo scrached his head. "Who in Mainframe could have done that?"

Dot put a hand to her mouth in thought. "I think its time we go talk to my father."

Welman Matrix, the Sprite turned null turned robot scientist, had tried to acclimate himself to peaceful society after returning from the grave. He found it very difficult. So much had changed since he'd been gone, his children had grown, there was so much more to learn. In a world such as this, he quickly found home in his experiments.

He'd been living in Lost Angles for seconds focusing on the study of nulls. Being one himself, he felt it was a way to make up what his gateway command had done to the twin city and its residents. The nulls liked it in Lost Angles, and they seemed to like him well enough allowing him to observe as they went about their daily lives. 

"Hello there Bluey." Welman said, peering down at a blue and black null as it skittered by. "Back again today I see?" He followed it as it tucked itself into a niche in the wall. "I've seen you return to this place every day since I got here. Is it possible this is your home? Or maybe it was once your home? Or your work?" He began to take notes. "It is fascinating to ponder how much of the sprite's daily patterns are preserved in nullified form. I wonder how I behaved before I regained myself, if I had a little hole to live in as well."

Bluey suddenly stiffened up, his nose pointing into the air as if on high alert. In a nano he had left his burrow and slipped across the street. Something in the back of Welman's null instincts told him it was time to run away. He suppressed it as much as he could, calling his higher intelligence into play. "I wonder what's happening around here." He clomped his metal frame around the corner of the dilapidated building, stepping over other fleeing nulls on his way. There on the other side was a gaping black doorway, the entrance stuck into the side of a freestanding wall with nothing but clear air on the other side. Welman studied it a moment. "Puzzling. I'm sure I would have noticed this sooner if it had been here." He leaned into the entrance, finding a metal grated staircase leading straight up into a dark foreboding pipe. The light deteriorated before he could see any landing above.

He pulled his head out of the hole and tromped around the back of the free wall. It was solid and blank. He stood at a cross-section and leaned to either side comparing the two faces of the brick. Door. Wall. Door. Wall.

"Curious."

"Dad! Watch out! Don't go near it!"

He looked up to see his daughter along with AndrAIa, Ray, Mouse, and Bob descending on him from the sky. Dot rushed up to grab his frame. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine." He said, a little obviously. "But I'm quite confused about this mysterious door that goes somewhere on one side and nowhere on the other."

"It's the variable at work again." AndrAIa said. She leaned into the door and stared up the steps. "I wonder why one opened here."

"Does the location matter?" Bob asked.

"Well, I've noticed…" AndrAIa explained, turning to him, "all the other holes opened in places you've spent a lot of time at. Your apartment, Dot's office, the Diner. Have you even been here since you started reading that file?"

"No not to Lost Angles." Bob said, a little miffed about being a catalyst but trying his best to hide it. "I haven't even been in this area except for when that game landed."

"Maybe the game weakened up the sector." Mouse suggested.

AndrAIa rolled her eyes. "Or the thing has gotten stronger and is doing stuff on its own."

Bob muttered under his breath. "At least then it wouldn't be my fault."

AndrAIa leaned back into the doorframe. "Stairs this time. I guess this makes up for that 'down' hole in the Diner."

Ray appeared over her shoulder again. "We going in?"

Dot whirled on him. "No we're not going in! Are you suicidal?"

"We've been in before." Ray defended. "Stairs would be a good workout. But seriously, if this 'makes up for the down hole in the diner' maybe we'll find Matrix up there somewhere."

"I want my brother back pretty badly." Dot said, gravely. "But I'm not sending anyone else into anymore holes on a whim." She turned to her father and got back to business. "Dad, you need to come back to the Principle Office. I'm going to need your help to figure out what's happening to the system."

Welman nodded his little green body. "Of course, Dot. Anything I can do…"

"Good." She said. She looked to the rest of them. "C'mon team, let's go." 

Bob and Mouse made to follow but AndrAIa grabbed Ray's arm before he could move from her side. "Wait." She whispered to him. "Do you really think Matrix could be up there?"

"Crash it if I know." He replied. "I was looking for an excuse to go back in. Its not every day you get to explore something like this and I wussed out the last time."

"It makes perfect sense though." She said. "I'm game if you are. We can steal a flashlight from Welman's stuff and climb in before anyone knows we're gone." 

"You're sure about that?" He asked. "I mean, I'll take the risk but have you thought it through?"

"I'll admit that jumping down a hole after Matrix was hasty." She said. "But stairs… stairs are different. If the suction starts we'll have a way to climb back down, and if the sound starts we can always jump or slide down the banister. Call me pathetic but I'm desperate to find Matrix. We'll only be in there for a nano to them. I think I can chance just a look."

"Its not pathetic." He assured her. "I'll get Mouse."

"No." AndrAIa said. "Dot'll need her to help figure out the file stuff. We'd just stand around pointing the obvious out anyway, they wont miss us for a moment." She punched him in the arm as she took off for Welman's camp. "I'll just be a nano! Don't get yourself eaten while I'm gone!"

"I did not write this file." Welman said. "But I think I have an idea who did."

"Who?" Mouse, Bob and Dot pressed, their eyes pleading.

"There was a colleague of mine back at the lab who thrived on these sort of code puzzles. He never very productive persay… but he did like encryptions."

"Do you think he did this on purpose?" Bob asked.

He shook his head. "Probably not. He was not destructive, just mischievous. More than likely he stuck a variable in to prove that he could, not knowing that it would rip holes in the system. I wish I could pull up his record, but I'm afraid that was destroyed with the Principle Office of the sister city."

"Maybe there's something on him in here." Dot offered. "It's worth a look."

"Let's start where I found the file." Bob suggested, pulling up a vidwindow. "Maybe his notes were stored in the same place."

"Good idea." Dot agreed.

Mouse looked around. "Hey, have any of you noticed where AndrAIa and Ray have gone to?"

Dot seemed to have just noticed they were missing. "No, they were with us in Lost Angles… did we leave them behind?"

"Should we look for them?" Bob asked.

Mouse waved a hand. "Nah, why bother. I hope they've both lived long enough in this system to find their way home by now. We'll just show them where to dive in when they get here." She punched some buttons on her compad. "Its Enzo I'm worried about. Where'd he go?"

"He's with Frisket," Dot replied, "he'll be okay."

….

"Cmon, boy! I'm going to help everyone out my own way!"

Frisket followed a few steps behind. He had to look after his boy, but didn't particularly like where they were headed.

Enzo had changed into the cadet uniform Bob had given him so long ago. He felt very important as he marched through the PO. "Theta and I will solve this mystery. A guardian's gotta do what a guardian's gotta do! Right Frisket?"

Frisket whimpered a little.

Enzo ignored him. They carried on high-spirited until they arrived at a very familiar door. Enzo paused and punched numbers on his keytool. "Well, this is it, Frisket, Dot's office." A scanner came out of Theta's top. "You ready?"

Frisket tucked his ears back.

Enzo's eye took on a cunning glare. "So am I!"

…

"Pshew! These stairs go for ages!"

AndrAIa shone the light up the steps, huffing and puffing. "Just like the hallway. How high do you think we are?"

Ray looked down the shaft to the tiny speck of light that was their entrance. "If we weren't in a tunnel I could see your house from here."

She laughed to herself. "I wonder if we'll just keep climbing right out of the system."

"By all counts we already are 'out of the system'."

"Do you think Matrix is at the top of these stairs?"

Ray shook his head. "More than likely he'll fall on us." She smirked at his sarcasm and flashed the light in his eyes. 

"Aahh! Foul!" 

Satisfied, she laughed and kept climbing. A few nanos later they paused for a rest. AndrAIa turned her flashlight off to save energy. It was pitch black around except from the light from Surfr's suit. "Did you know you glow in the dark?"

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

She threatened him with the flashlight again and he cowered. Then, thoroughly amused, she changed the subject. "Did you leave your surfbaud outside?"

"I've got it in me." He replied.

"You what?"

He couldn't see her in the dark but looked over anyway. "I go into it, it goes into me… we're the same thing. You can't expect me to carry it around all the time."

"I guess that's a good point." She mused. "I suppose I just never gave it much thought." She clipped the flashlight back on and turned up the stairs. "Well, forward I guess."

"Onward and upward."

They walked up another two-hundred steps before pausing to take another rest. Then marched up one hundred more before stopping again. After reaching a dizzying height and enduring the aching pain in their legs the two of them sat down side by side on a step for a final breather.

AndrAIa stretched her neck. "You know… I think I've had it!"

"Like I said," Ray panted, "good work out."

"We'll have to find another way to reach Matrix." She said. "I wish I could keep going, but, I'm so exhausted."

"Here's hoping he's on his way down." Ray resolved. He looked over at the clockwork in the walls. "This place is exactly the same as the other one, bunches of wires and gears." He risked pulling up another ball of light to take a closer look. The wheels in the walls seemed to be turning slightly. "Hey, were these moving in the other one?"

AndrAIa shot her light over at the wall. He was right, the gears were in motion and gaining speed. She moved the torch to her side of the tunnel. The same thing was happening. Her ears sensed the faint clicking of the teeth as they met each other in the increased revolutions. It was then she picked up the rumble in the distance, a wave pattern sickeningly familiar to her now and it made her throat tighten. The wheels turned madly in the walls. "Run!"

Ray took a double take as she leapt down the stairs. "What?"

She grabbed and tore him out of his seat. "Just run! It's coming to life again!" Before they'd descended half the distance the impending blast of sound and air caught up with them. The two sprites were thrown from the staircase, freefalling into the shaft. AndrAIa hit the stairs again on her arm, a sharp pain spiking up through her shoulder. Ray tumbled past her, finding his icon and releasing his board beneath his feet.

The surf baud was too long for the stairwell and lodged itself between the two walls, sticking in place. He landed on it and flinched as the edges scraped metal. "AndrAIa!" She got her feet under her and joined him on the platform, clutching her arm. The hurt in her ears was making her head pound. She couldn't hear a word he was saying to her but got his plan well enough. He lowered her down off the edge to a step and waited for her to grope her way to the floor before hiding his board again and dropping down to meet her. The air vibrated with the sound, the two sprites scrambled to leave the doorway. Once outside everything was silent and they collapsed on the pavement, winded.

"I hope Theta can get a reading in there!" Enzo cried. Frisket was holding tight to his belt, as they hung precariously in the pull of the hole. The boy had taped his keytool at the end of a cord and lowered it into the mouth of the tunnel. It whipped around in the suction that was still stripping paper off the walls. As they hung there a strange rumbling cry shook the room. The sounds became louder and Enzo could distinguish the screech of metal on metal and the wail of voices as they were warped by the din. 

In a sudden blast of confused air, the vacuum changed direction.

Enzo flew backwards into the wall, Frisket pinned behind him. Picture frames, file sorters, lamps, and furniture spewed out of the hole like bullets. The boy covered his face as glass hit and shattered around his head. He heard the screams get louder. Dot's desk reappeared and slammed into the wall a foot away from him. In a moment it was followed by a plush couch and office chair, the heavy pieces jamming into the opposite corner. 

Something metal flew straight for his head, but Frisket caught it in his mouth before the connection. Enzo took a moment to examine the object hovering inches from his nose. "Is that a zip-board?" In nanos the deep scream came louder and something big green and flailing flew out of the hole and into the room. 

It smashed into the desk, bashing in the center like a battering ram. Enzo looked to Frisket then pushed himself up against the wind to see what had arrived. "Matrix?"

The sprite threw a piece of splintered wood out of his face. "What in the Web?"

"Matrix! I thought that was you!" Enzo looked from him to the hole as it continued to force wind and sound against the walls. "What were you doing in there?"

"Never mind!" He said. He was stuck upside down in the desk, his legs hanging in front of his face. With a kick he dislodged himself and reached a hand up pull the rest of him free of the rubble. "Let's get out of here!"

The three of them scrambled into the hall, leaving the hole in Dot's office to its own devices. 

When they got to the War Room everyone was shocked. Matrix was like a great green specter returned without ceremony from the grave. Bob pointed at him. "You're alive!"

"Yeah." Matrix said, holding his side. 

"Wh-where did you come from?" Mouse asked at a stutter.

He looked up, exasperated. "The Diner. You all saw me go down there!" He came to a sudden realization. "Speaking of which, how'd you get here so fast?"

Bob was getting even more weirded out. "Matrix, you've been gone most of this second."

"I've what?" He asked. "No I went down the hole in the diner and came out in your desk, Dot." He winced. "And it hurt too."

"Wait… you came out the hole in my office?" Dot cried. 

Bob scratched his head. "How did that happen?"

Mouse shrugged. "I dunno. This place is random. Let's just be thankful he's alive and in one piece."

"I'll thank the User for that." Dot said. She ran up to Matrix and gave him a hug. Unfortunately it pinched his broken ribs and made him yelp. 

She backed off, a worried look on her face, but Bob and Mouse started to laugh. "That was cute Matrix!"

He smirked at them. "Very funny."

Dot smiled, glad to see all was well. "Come on, I'll patch you up."

As the two of them left, Enzo ran down the stairs with Theta held high. "I took a scan of the hole Bob! I bet it tells you everything!"

"You shouldn't have been down there, Enzo." Bob reprimanded. "You could have gotten hurt."

"I know I know, no lectures." He groaned. "Just look at what I got?"

"I'll check it out, Sugar." Mouse volunteered. She plugged Theta into the console and pulled up the scanning history. "We'll see what you've got in this thing."

It had taken an entire microsecond for AndrAIa and Ray to recover from their fall, mostly because their ears were ringing and their heads spinning from the vertigo. Out of mutual courtesy they neglected to say anything to each other. AndrAIa checked her arm. Luckily it wasn't broken, but it was cut and badly bruised. She dressed it as best she could with what she could salvage out of Welman's camp. Ray was pretty much unscathed, but sat stroking the edges of his board softly as one would a bandaged wound. She tapped him on his shoulder to get his attention and tell him it was time to go.

They flew over the city toward the Principle office, AndrAIa feeling woosy. Previously when she left the tunnels she would have a moment of contrast to lift her spirits. This time the whole city seemed to be rank with the heavy aura. Even up in the sky she could feel its affects, but she sadly noted that she was getting used to it. She was afraid she'd have to live with it for the rest of her life.

She looked over to Ray. "Do you think they found anything while we were gone?"

He looked back "Say again?"

She was actually amused, maybe staying silent wasn't really the medicine she needed. "Nevermind!" 

They touched down and went inside, finding the War Room thankfully quiet but not cold like outside. Welman, Bob, and Mouse searched through the system files, scrolling through pages of archived text with the occasional sigh. Ray walked up behind Mouse and put his head on her shoulder. She grinned at him. "Where have you been?"

He whispered, hoping she'd follow suit. "Exploring." Then with a groan, added, "I've had my fill of those holes."

She reached back and brushed through his short blonde hair. "I figured as much."

AndrAIa wandered up to Bob. "What are we looking for?"

"Information about a colleague of Welman's from back in the day." He replied, then stopped and turned to her. "You know what… go down to the infirmary. Dot's down there."

"Why's she in the infirmary?"

Enzo made to answer but Bob slapped a hand over his mouth. "You'll have to see for yourself." AndrAIa gave the rest of the room a puzzled look then tiptoed up the stairs and out into the hall. She went out of her way to avoid the level with Dot's office. Just thinking about the sound of that telltale howling made her skin crawl. That and her ears were sore of it. She decided to get them checked out while she was down in the infirmary, or at the very least grab some earplugs. She should have thought of those before going in the last time.

She turned the corner to the infirmary and stopped dead. There on the bench was Matrix, his sister wrapping bandages around is ribs. He seemed less than amused, but to AndrAIa he could have been an angel. She'd thought she would never see him again. 

Taking off at a run, AndrAIa collided with him and wrapped her arms around his neck with tears in her eyes. "Matrix! You're all right!"

He smiled down on her and brought his arm up around her back. "Yeah, I'm all right."

"I'm so glad. I thought…" She wiped her tears into his shirt, then threw herself off and started to assault him with a barrage of arm-punches. "How DARE you go in there alone! You said we were going in TOGETHER you Self-righteous DIPSWITCH!"

"Ow! OW!" Matrix cried, shielding his ribs. "Stop beating me! I'm broken!"

She returned to clinging around his neck. "I love you."

Dot backed quietly out of the room to give the two of them some privacy.

…

When the returned to the War Room, Mouse had discovered interesting information in the memory of Enzo's toy. She looked up when she heard the door open. "Good! Dot, you're here. Just in time."

Dot came down the stairs and sat with Bob.

Mouse pulled up the projector again. "Enzo, in his brief bout with heroism…" Dot took this moment to personally switch the boy out of his cadet uniform., "actually took readings from inside the hole at the moment the suction switched direction."

Welman studied the lines of information carefully. "What does this mean?"

"It means we've now got an idea of how these things work." Mouse answered. She pulled up a visual image of the inside of the pipe. "Theta's range is limited, but we can clearly see here that inside the tube the gears in the walls are moving, and when the wind changes the gears stop and move in the opposite direction."

"So there's some reason to this madness." Dot said with relief. "If we jam the gears will that stop the motion?"

"I'm afraid not, honey." Mouse replied. "Watch." She played back the sketchy visual model which showed the gears rearranging themselves in the walls. It appeared that the moments before the direction switched the wheels reconfigured themselves into a different but no less perfect alignment. "These things are acting on their own. I don't know if this implies some sort of sentience or not, but at the very least I doubt anything we do to this thing will have any affect. If we jam or break something, it'll probably just rearrange itself and keep working."

"Glitch could get a better reading." Bob volunteered. "What if I go down to Dot's office and see what I can find."

"I don't want you going near that thing." Dot resolved. "I've said that before, there will be no more sprites going into holes."

"But the one in the office blows out." Enzo said. "Bob can't get sucked in by a blow-out hole. And it should be finished puking up stuff by now."

Bob made a face. "Gee Enzo, thank you for that."

"The Lost Angles one is a 'blow-out' hole." Ray offered.

Dot looked critically at him. "And how, exactly would you know that?"

He turned his head, whistling and pretending he hadn't said anything.

Welman was still puzzling over the streaming digits on the screen. "I wish we knew why these places changed direction. Unless Mouse is right and there is some sort of cognizant element at work here, there should be some explanation for why some things start, stop, and change the way they do."

Matrix and AndrAIa arrived in the room. The game sprite rushed down the stairs. "Open a vidwindow!"

Mouse obeyed and the face of Mike the TV appeared. He was in the middle of a breaking news bulletin.

"This just in- reports of strange doorways opening throughout the city. Dark and foreboding, these doorways seem to come out of nowhere! Now a word from an eyewitness…" Mike turned the camera to face a woman binome who was pale and shaking all over, "tell us, ma'am, in your own words, what happened."

"I was rinsing out some things when suddenly my kitchen sink and all my clothes vanished down into a black hole. I ran to get out of the house. I'm not going back there again!"

Mike appeared back on the screen. "There you have it! A woman's innocent laundry fiercely cannibalized by mysterious black holes. What could it be? A virus? Another webcreature? What is happening to our fair city!" An arm appeared offering the reporter a notepad. "A bulletin!" Mike snatched it from him. "Oh this is terrible Ladies and Gentelmen! I've just gotten a list of sightings! It appears doorways have opened in baudway, level 3, floating point, kits, sector 31, sector 101, sector 5, Mrs. Pickadilly's third grade classroom, the energy park in 1000 –"

Dot looked at everyone. "They're everywhere! Why is this happening?"

Mouse ventured to answer. "The loose variable is still at work in the system, the longer it goes unchecked the grander the problem becomes."

"Then we need to find a way to stop it." Bob resolved. He stood up. "I'm going in for better readings."

"Bob, no!" Dot cried.

"I need to survey the city." He told her. "Its my job to keep Mainframe safe. I've fallen behind on that job for the past couple seconds, its time to make it up to the people of the system." 

"That's very noble of you, but I still don't want you to go." Dot pleaded.

AndrAIa hated herself for this, but stepped forward. "I'll go with him, Dot, I've checked the holes out more extensively than anyone. I can help."

"AndrAIa, these things are unpredictable." Dot said. "You've got to understand I'm only thinking about your safety. If there were a way to do it without anyone getting hurt I'd be right behind you."

"I'll tell you what." Bob compromised. "AndrAIa and I will go find Mike and get that list. Then we'll check around the system for all the new holes. Glitch and I will get readings from each of the new holes and transfer them back here. Maybe there's some sort of pattern to help us out." He looked to Welman. "In the meantime, you guys keep pouring through the files. I showed you where I started, you should be fine without me." He looked down. "Does that sound like a plan, Dot?"

She bit her lip and nodded. "Ironic as it sounds, yes Bob, that's a pretty good plan."

"I'm glad you see it my way." He grinned at her. "Great. AndrAIa, let's go."

She nodded. "I'll grab a file folder. Oh and earplugs."

"Earplugs?" Bob asked.

Ray nodded knowingly. "Trust her on this one, mate, she knows what she's talking about."

"Okay." Bob said with a shrug. He and AndrAIa made for the hallway. "Let us know if you find anything!"

Dot agreed, trying her best to be strong in the face of all this uncertainty. "Right."

Mike the TV had been right, holes had opened sporadically throughout the system. In addition to the binome woman's kitchen sink, Bob and AndrAIa found holes in the middle of staircases, at the bottom of sewer pipes, halfway up walls, at the ends of slides, in lines of bushes, even in ceilings. One they found was in the underside of a table, the top set with dinner plates and napkins. Bob fed Glitch's analyses into AndrAIa's file folder. "This is getting weirder and weirder."

She checked the list. "The next one is actually IN the data sea." She said. "It says it swallowed a boat."

Bob shook his head. "I hope no one was on that boat." He spotted a tear down the street and walked over to mend it. In all this craziness about holes, AndrAIa'd completely forgotten about the powersurges. "Do you think the loose variable has something to do with all the blackouts?"

"Probably." He said, bitterly. 

She sensed the undertones in his voice. "You know, its not you're fault, Bob. You had no idea something like this would happen, you were just reading a file."

"I know." He said. "It just irks me to think that this variable used me to get in the system. I feel like such a tool."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, its okay. And when I say it, it means a lot. You know, since I was the one who thought it was your fault in the first place." She smiled sweetly at him and he smiled back. She did have a point. The game sprite ran through their gathered information in her file folder. "You know, of all these new holes not one of them has a wind."

"You know, I noticed that." Bob said. "I was just thinking to myself how not-dangerous this mission was and how pleased Dot will be when she hears the most exciting thing we saw was a hole in the top of a tree."

"After the one in the ACDSea, there's two more before we run out of list." AndrAIa announced. "That's probably a good place to stop for now. I mean, more have probably opened around here while we've been looking, but we should regroup and compare info."

"If they haven't called us yet, they're just going to tell us the same thing." Bob said. "But It's getting close to night cycle. It would be nice to take a break." They flew over the city toward the sea, stopping to repair tears along the way.

…

"Mouse, why don't you take a better look at the original file." Dot suggested, scrolling. "You might have better luck then the rest of us."

Ray looked up from his console. "Hey, I found a recipe for Hex's biscuits." 

"She wrote it down?" Dot asked.

He opened it up. "And there aren't even any binomes in them, but she says they go good with null soup."

Welman shivered. "Please don't say things like that."

Dot mused. "Sorry Dad."

The null used his robot arm to open a subfolder. "I've found some names from his department in a list for another project. Maybe it will give us some leads."

"Great." Dot cheered. "The sooner we get the system back in order the sooner I can sleep at night." She paused. "I keep hoping Phong will roll in. I wonder where he is."

"Maybe he's gotten spat out another hole." Enzo suggested. "Maybe Bob and AndrAIa will find him."

"Maybe he's just wandered off somewhere and gotten lost." Matrix said, sardonically. "Or he's in his office staring at that ball gadget again."

"I doubt he's gotten lost." Dot said. "But as long as you're sitting there making snide comments I have hope that he'll reappear."

Mouse spoke absentmindedly in her analysis. "The encryption seems to break down and loop back halfway though the file. This file is getting more and more poorly planned. It was probably a first attempt. Perhaps elements of the plot are making the system behave like this." She looked up. "When Bob gets back lets make him give us a book report."

"Okay." Dot agreed. "They should be checking in soon. Anyway."

In a few nanos AndrAIa's face appeared in a vidwindow. "Okay, we've cleared the list."

"Good job." Dot said. 

AndrAIa typed on her file folder. "I'm sending you the analysis so that you can get started on it. We'll be back in a bit, Bob's fixing more tears."

"Sounds great." Dot pulled up another window. "It's downloaded and ready to go. Hurry back though, we've got some questions we'd like to check out."

"Right." AndrAIa closed the window and looked to Bob. He was leaning his head in the last hole, an opening in the window of a hat shop. "Dot wants us to hurry back."

"I still think Glitch could get a better reading from inside one of these things."

"He probably could." AndrAIa agreed. She looked in the hole. It was another walkway, this time with three steps leading up to it instead of down. The air was still inside. "Well… we probably shouldn't, but…"

"You want to go in don't you?" Bob asked, sounding sly. "I bet you like it in these tunnels."

"No I don't like it." She replied defensively. He gave her a knowing look and she began to reconsider. Perhaps she did like going in them. There was something intriguing about the 'beyond', and something thrilling about tempting fate. She could tell by his brown eyes that he really wanted to investigate. "We can't go in far. The farther we go in the longer it takes to get out. Just because the air's not moving now doesn't mean it wont start."

"We'll just go in far enough to get a decent reading on the gears and the wires in the walls, I promise." Bob assured her.

She pulled the earplugs she'd gathered out of her belt. "Okay, put these in, these things tend to start screaming at me."

Once equipped the two of them climbed up the stairs and into the tunnel. They moved in a few yards, AndrAIa stopped while she was still comfortable that a decent sprint could save them in the case of emergency. Bob started checking the walls. "This is amazing, the electrical interference is totally off the scale. Its like these wires aren't even wires at all, just loose ions floating around this tunnel."

"Hmn…" AndrAIa said. She kept a close eye on the gears. "Say Bob, did anything in the plot have to do with tunnels in walls or strange sounds?"

"No," he replied, "actually it was a fairly lighthearted story about a girl who had bad luck." AndrAIa held her breath for a moment. She thought she'd seen a gear move, but a nano's hesitation convinced her she was wrong. "She was trying to prove herself to her friends and family so that they would let her take a trip on her own. But she was clumsy, and often broke stuff. There was one part that was really funny where she was trying to order energy shakes from a bar and kept getting the words wrong until she'd ordered everything on the menu. She got in a fight with the proprietor because she couldn't pay and spilled cocoa down his pants, it was a riot." The more he spoke the more she thought she saw motion in the walls. In the failing light it was hard to tell. She unplugged one ear hoping to hear some sort of clicking. She started to get a nervous feeling again, as if something was moving in the air. 

"Bob? What did this girl look like?"

"The one in the book? Well, she was bout your age." She heard a woosh. "Tall, long green hair." His voice vanished into the void. "Pale skin, freckles." She replugged her ear and turned to Bob who looked up. "Why do you ask?" 

Suddenly the walls sprang to life, rearranging their alignment and spinning madly. The tunnel pulled them off their feet and back into the darkness. AndrAIa tried to claw her way out, but she couldn't get a grip on the metal floor. Bob grabbed a hold of her "Glitch! Line!"

The keytool shot a golden rope and latched onto the banister ahead. Bob and AndrAIa hung horizontally in the hall, the moan of the world being sucked passed them at a ferocious speed. Despite Glitch's hold they were being drawn away from the oval of light . AndrAIa shouted to Bob. "Why isn't it working?"

"The force is too strong!" Bob replied. "Glitch has to lengthen the rope to keep attached to my arm!"

"So he can't reel us in?"

"I'll give it a try!" 

Their descent slowed, the keytool trying its best to shorten the distance. AndrAIa couldn't understand its signal but it appeared to be straining. Bob tried his best to be encouraging. "C'mon Glitch! You can do it!"

The keytool made the sound of an alarm, a light flashed red. Bob watched as a screen extended from its body revealing a dramatic drop in energy. Mending tears and analyzing holes all day had kept Glitch within normal operating parameters, but the gravity in this hole was too strong, the task of pulling them out so great that it had exhausted all of its resources. The golden energy beam began to flicker and die.

Bob's eyes grew wide. "No Glitch! Don't!" The line began to loose its integrity. "Glitch try!" But no amount of effort could resupply lost energy. The beam failed and Bob and AndrAIa vanished backward into the depths of nothing.

The nano she was in she was out. No sooner had AndrAIa lost sight of the oval doorway and resigned herself to blackness then she found herself flying into a pile of garbage in Mr. Pearson's Data Dump. Bob poked his head out of an adjacent pile, an empty food carton on his head. "AndrAIa? Are you okay?"

"Yeah," she said, trying to pry her way out, "I'm fine, I think I'm stuck." 

Bob disappeared into the heap and crawled out the front. "I'm coming."

After she'd been successfully salvaged and the two of them had picked the dregs out of their hair they heard a voice venturing down from above them. "What's this ruckus? Who's there?"

AndrAIa looked up. "Hi Mr. Pearson!" 

The one binome frowned down on them. He was then joined by a second figure. Bob's face lit up with surprise. "Phong?"

"Bob?" Phong stretched his neck to get a better look at them. "Oh, and AndrAIa! You must have come through that strange portal as well. It certainly is nice to see you."

"Phong? Have you been in the data dump this entire time?" AndrAIa cried. "You had me worried sick!"

"I have?" He seemed charmed. "Well, my apologies. I would have posted a note but I found myself leaving quite unexpectedly."

"Hmph. Unexpectedly." Mr. Pearson growled. "Truth is you didn't know he was here because the bleepin' sector is offline. I haven't been able to run me machines all cycle! And with night coming on I can't even turn on a light! What do I pay me taxes for if I'm forced to put up with this nbsp!"

AndrAIa smiled to herself as she shrugged apologetically. "Sorry, Mr. Pearson, I'm afraid we've been a little busy lately."

"With what I wonder? Without vidwindows or zip boards I haven't gotten a wind of news for nigh on a second!" 

Bob waved to interrupt his tirade. "Um, speaking of no zip boards… can you help us out of here?"

Once the four of them were sitting outside Mr. Pearson's shack AndrAIa gladly filled them in on everything that had happened. Phong stroked his beard and pondered. "This is a dilemma we have found ourselves in, but I think I know where we can find information on the colleague of Welman's."

AndrAIa's spirits lightened. "You do? Did you know him."

"No, not personally." Phong answered. "I am afraid I cannot even recall his name. But I remember his work. I remember being part of the decision to discontinue it. The of the sister city at the time was a good sprite named Lee. He had grown tired of funding this scientist's encoding experiments. Seeing that they continually released code fragments into the central system network on accident, who could blame him? Still, Welman's coworker would not part with his research so easily, and Lee sought my help to confiscate his files and store them in Mainframe for safekeeping. We destroyed much of it years ago, but apparently one of his files were accidentally sorted into the database. I kept a record of the transaction and a list of all associated files and attachments in the safe in my office."

"We've got to get out of here and get in that safe." Bob resolved. "But without power we can't even send a message to Dot and let her know where to look."

"What about Glitch?" AndrAIa asked. "He doesn't rely on the system power to work."

Bob patted his wrist. "Out of juice remember?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot." She pouted. "And no power means no recharge."

Bob looked to the proprietor. "Is there another way out of this sector that doesn't rely on system power?"

The binome chewed his toothpick a nano before answering. "There is a service ladder on the far side with the cranes. You'll have to climb."

"Okay." Bob agreed. He looked to AndrAIa and she nodded. "Phong, I'm afraid you'll have to stay here. We'll move better without you."

"Dot should know the combination to the safe." Phong replied. "Do not worry about me."

"Then I guess we're off." AndrAIa resolved. She and Bob turned to leave. "Thanks Mr. Pearson." The old man's grumbling followed them out as they set off across the trash. 

…

The trip through the junkyard was a long one. AndrAIa found night cycle coming on much sooner than she'd expected, and by the time she and Bob found the service ladder they were walking in the dark. Bob stepped passed the ladder and ushered her up. "Ladies first."

"Thank you sir." She ascended one rung at a time up to the crane platform. They stopped for a brief rest on the wall-mounted service area before mounting the ladder for the rest of the trek. When they'd cleared the top of the pit, AndrAIa found the city lights beyond the bounds of G Prime most inviting. "Let's get going."

Bob popped open his zip board and rose into the darkness of the data sky. They weaved their way through industrial piping and made for the Principle Office where the others were waiting.

"Where have you been?" Dot asked. "I thought you were coming right back."

"We got sidetracked." AndrAIa explained. "We were sucked into one of the holes. We came out in the junkyard."

"That explains the smell." Matrix said, but he seemed to be joking. "At least it didn't take you long come out."

"That's the truth." Bob agreed.

AndrAIa walked up to the "Dot, we found Phong in the Data Dump."

Dot smiled. "Well there's a relief. Was he okay?"

"He's fine." She answered. "He told us where we can find stuff about the file. He says there's a record of it in the safe in his office. Do you know the combination?"

"Of course." She said, proudly. "I'm not in charge for nothing. Why don't you and Matrix come with me. The rest of you, stay here and keep looking." She caught Mouse's eye and then turned to the blue sprite by the door. "Oh and Bob, Mouse would like you to tell her what that file was about. Give her all the details you can remember from the story, and please don't give it verbatim, we don't need to release another four or five variables into the system by word of mouth."

"Yeah, sure, Dot." He said, rolling his eyes.

She nicked his jaw. "There's a good boy." Then left with the two gamers for Phong's office. When AndrAIa reached the door she found it remarkably fresh and clean. In a world full of darkness, this place was still untouched by the aura. It made her feel like she was walking on clouds. Even the lamps seemed brighter. Matrix and Dot didn't note any difference. Dot walked over to Phong's desk and pulled aside a cabinet door. "Now, let's see if I get this right on the first try."

AndrAIa sidled up to Matrix. "You know, I like it in here."

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Phong's office?"

She threaded her fingers into his. "Maybe, or maybe I was talking about being on your arm."

He leaned down to her with a mischievous grin. "You're not foretelling doom and deletion, I kind of miss that."

"But I bet you're glad I smell like garbage." She said, kissing him on the cheek. "When we solve this thing let's go on vacation or something. Someplace bright."

"Whatever you want, AndrAIa." Matrix assured her.

Dot heard the lock click and snapped her fingers in victory. "Success! She opened it and pulled out a box of file folders. Placing it on the desk, she began to weed through, pulling things out and placing them aside. "Dad finally remembered the name of this associate of his, Ericell, so look for the 'E's if you can. And if you can think of anything else our creative, eccentric core keeper would file it under go ahead and search for that too. I'm just pulling random stuff right now."

The three of them dug through the files, looking at the labels and strewing the rejected pieces over the desk. AndrAIa picked up the 'H' file. "Do you think he'd store him under 'hoax'?"

"Clever." Dot said. "More than likely under 'Hazard' or 'Hilarious, Potentially'. But it's worth a shot."

Matrix dug through the files again. "You know, these were organized at one point." He pulled out one, saw the letter 'Q' and threw it over his shoulder. "You know I still haven't found the 'E's."

"I've got it." Dot said, double-clicking it open. "And here he is, Ericell… encryption experiments. Let's take it back down to the War Room."

Matrix nodded. "And let's just leave the mess."

AndrAIa'd diverted power to the Dump so that Dot could bring Phong up via vidwindow. New holes were opening up every nano. The more frequent the holes the more often the blackouts. It was all the game sprite could do to keep the system running. Images ran through her head of holes opening and sucking down power lines. She only paused to hear Dot and Mouse muse about revelations in Ericell's file.

"It looks like this man had quite a rep." Mouse said. "Was he a practical joker?"

"Not purposely." Welman answered. "He liked to test his experiments on people, but he never found the outcomes amusing."

"What kind of experiments?" Matrix asked, leaning over the banister above. "Dangerous stuff?"

"No." Welman answered. "Encryption tricks. Cups that never went empty, files that wouldn't close, popup doors, looping vidwindows…"

"It sounds like he had a flair for the endless." Ray observed.

Bob gave a laugh. "He wrote a long enough story."

"Do you think that is what he was trying to make?" Enzo asked. "Do you think he was trying to code a neverending file and accidentally programmed a loose variable?"

Mouse shook her head. "That variable was far too complex to be a fluke."

"Mouse is right." Dot agreed. "Either Ericell was inhumanly lucky or the variable was deliberate."

"The file itself may not be endless." Phong said, cryptically, through the window. "But the affects of the variable will be as long as it roams unchecked in the system."

Dot frowned up at him in thought. "What are you saying?"

AndrAIa looked up. "Are you thinking that the solution to the variable problem might be written in the file?"

Enzo got excited. "Maybe the characters in the story find the same problem in their system and then solve it!"

"It does seem uncanny how the main character seems so much like AndrAIa…" Matrix agreed.

"Now that COULD be a fluke." Dot pointed out. "The character may have looked like AndrAIa, but with the kind of description Bob said it gave, any young woman might fit. It's just like reading any book, literary designs might remind us of sprites we actually know, or systems we've visited, or places we grew up. It's all very mental."

"Dot's right." Bob agreed. "In my mind's eye the main character looked exactly like AndrAIa, and the place she lived looked like my apartment, and the places she hung out looked like places in Mainframe."

"And the variable affected your apartment first." AndrAIa said. "And it affected me, my adaptive intelligence could pick up the change. The holes in the system recognized me, too, always coming to life when I was in them."

"But they came to life with out you in them too." Matrix observed. "A certain event in the diner comes to mind right now…"

"That's because once the variable started gumming up the works it took on a life of its own." Mouse explained. "It just seems to like AndrAIa best."

"Whoopee." The game sprite said, sardonically.

"Hold on, I'm getting an idea." Dot warned. Everyone silenced and looked to her. She turned her violet eyes on Bob. "The variable entered the system through your code. It affected places according to the way you perceived the story. Of all of us here, even including AndrAIa, you've had the most affect on what this variable is doing to our system. Maybe there's some way to use your influence to stop it."

Ray crossed his arms again. "Influence doesn't seem to be the point to me. He seems to have told this bit of code where to start ripping the system open, but its been going ahead without him for cycles. Let me just say, I don't think his 'influence' is as strong as it initially was."

"Maybe he doesn't have any at all." Matrix said from above. "Maybe he was just the catalyst. Maybe this system error is just randomly eating us alive."

"Hey," Bob said, casting the renegade an offended look, "I was actually important for a micro, give me my fifteen nanos of fame."

"You got those when you read a dodgy file and released a malignant code fragment into the works." Ray said with a sarcastic nod.

Mouse threw up her hand for their attention. "Hold up, Ray, honey, I think you've just given me an idea."

His eyebrows spiked. "Ooh. Something good I hope."

"What've you got, Mouse?" AndrAIa asked. 

"Well, follow me on this… but we've just returned to the beginning of this madness. Bob read a 'dodgy file'. He read the file and put the virus in the system. It was the reading that released it. But he never finished the book."

Phong's eyebrows settled with knowing approval.

Dot caught Mouse's train of thought. "The variable is loose because it is undefined. We all assumed that the variable was programmed to destroy the system, what if it wasn't. What if it was never meant to hurt us at all?"

"How do you figure that?" Matrix asked.

"You've got to explain it more, ladies." Bob appealed. "Exactly how is THIS –" he pointed to the system scan where another sector went offline "-not hurting us?"

"Well it is now." Dot said obviously. "I'm suggesting it wasn't MEANT to."

"Ericell wasn't out to crash the system." Welman agreed. "Recall, if you will, that back then we thought we were alone in cyberspace."

Mouse went ahead and completed her idea. "The variable is unfinished. The book is unfinished. I've been trying to decode the file but I'm only halfway through. Not nearly as far as Bob says he's read already. I'm guessing the rest of the variable's programming is in the text. If Bob finishes the book, the code the variable was declared for will be complete and the error will be fixed."

It made perfect sense. AndrAIa nearly clapped in excitement. "So all Bob has to do is read the rest of the story! Its so simple!"

"Do you think that's it?" Bob asked. "Phong? Is that what you thought?"

Phong bent in closer. "I recall an old saying that says 'A good job is its own reward'."

Enzo grinned. "And don't judge a README by its file name!"

"Or an address by its Meta." The Surfr added.

"Or a Renegade by the end of his Gun. CAN WE STOP WITH THE CLICHES ALREADY?" Matrix cried. He pointed down at Bob. "You. Read the book. If it solves the problem, then fabulous. If not, then at least by then we'll have had time to go through the rest of Ericell's files."

"Uh, right." Bob agreed. Mouse handed him the mysterious file and he opened up to the bookmark three-forths of the way down the scroll bar.

"Are you done yet?"

"No."

"Are you done yet?"

"No." 

"Are you done yet?"

"NO! USER NO!" Bob roared. Enzo looked defeated. Bob took a deep breath and tried to calm down. "Enzo, why don't you go play with Frisket or stick your head in a towel dispenser or something productive like that?"

"Enzo, leave Bob alone." Dot called. AndrAIa worked frantically with the power matrix trying to keep the system in order. Sectors seemed to be crashing on a whim now, a fear was growing in her mind. She was loosing track of which sector was owing power to what, and if this kept up, it was possible a handful of sectors could crash the system. Dot spoke and made her jump. "How are we doing?"

"Oh… fine! Just fine!" AndrAIa said quickly.

Dot crossed her arms. "That bad, huh?"

The sea sprite sighed. "Yes… we're suffering a drop in system energy. If I spread us too thin…"

"We won't let that happen." Matrix resolved.

"What will we do?" Enzo asked. "If we're loosing power, where do we get more?"

"We've got that one covered." Mouse said, indicating her traveling buddy. "We just did the same thing in another system, remember? Back up the core with the raw energy of the sea?"

Dot turned to them. "You think that could work here?"

Ray nodded. "We've got the plans for the transducer stored in Ship's memory. We could build another one."

Dot grinned, looking determined. "Perfect. You two get on that." She looked over to AndrAIa. "I'll issue an evacuation for all sectors. As the citizens of Mainframe come to the Principle Office, you can power down. That'll save us a little bit of time."

AndrAIa agreed. "As long as Bob can finish that file, we can try anything."

"Alright then." Dot agreed. "Matrix, go down and get Phong and Mr. Pearson out of the junkyard. We'll continue going through Ericell's files once we're all together again." Matrix nodded and headed out. Dot sighed and picked up the filefolder "It'll take all of us to find a solution in these files. I just hold out hope that Bob's reading will solve our problem."

….

"You got that end, Sugar?"

"All set." Ray hovered on his surfbaud, holding the end of what could have been a giant vacuum hose. Mouse was stationed inside the PO talking to him via vidwindow. Between them was an exceptionally long tube that wound its way through the city like a hollow black snake, into the Principle Office and through the energy transducer. 

She secured the end with the usable energy into the core control system. "Good, that should do it." The flame-haired sprite opened up another window to Dot. "We're good. Give us the word."

"The evacuation is almost complete." Dot replied. "I think we should wait until everyone's safe inside before we do anything drastic."

Mouse shrugged. "Whatever you say."

The closed the window and looked up as Matrix and Phong entered the room. "Good, I'm glad you're both back."

AndrAIa turned from the system registry. "It looks like everyone sans Surfr is in the building. It should be safe to shut the system down."

"Good. I'll tell the rest." She opened up a pinnacle window and addressed the great hall where the population was in waiting. "Attention, in a few nanos we will be offline. Remember, there is no need to panic. This is only a precaution. Thank you." She closed the window and looked to AndrAIa. "Do it."

It only took one button to close Mainframe down. Ray watched all the lights flick off throughout the sector. The buildings became dark, and the flow of information stood still. It was as if the city had died. He tightened his grip on the handle of the hose, knowing that there was no power for a vidwindow alert. He would just have to wait for the suction to turn on.

Dot gave the signal and Mouse flipped the switch. The raw energy of the ACDSea got to work and the core energy levels spiked. AndrAIa watched them, concerned. "This is a major inflow, we might have some system errors…"

"Now THERE's a fresh change of pace." Matrix scoffed. "Don't worry about it AndrAIa, I think we'll be fine."

Welman and Dot exchanged glances. It was possible Bob would finish the file and nothing would happen. They could be left with a powered-down system resembling a mysterious type of swiss cheese. Dot's stomach knotted again and she reuploaded Ericell's file folder contents onto the main viewer where she continued to page through it. "Phong, are you sure this is all we have?"

"If that is all that was in my safe, that is all that we have." He said. "I am afraid Lee and I disposed of most of the research when we forbade Ericell to continue it, and any left over died with the twin city."

"Then I've gone trough everything." Dot resolved. "I'll start over at the beginning in case there is something I missed."

There was a sudden rumble as the ground underneath them shook. Dot clamped on to the edge of the War Room display and looked quickly to Bob. He had grabbed the stair banister, but not finished the file, and upon locking eyes with her, shot back down to the README despite the shaking. An alarm blared above AndrAIa's head. "We've got a dramatic power loss. Something's gone wrong!" 

The quake stopped just as suddenly and a vidwindow with Mouse's face popped up. "Dot! The tap line from the sea has been intercepted somehow. Whether it's got Ray on his end, or a hole opened somewhere along the line... I can't tell from here. Point is I've unplugged the transducer from the core."

"What do you mean?" AndrAIa asked. "What do you mean by 'intercepted'?"

"I mean, the minute I unhooked this end the whole rig shot out of this room like a null from a game. Nearly flung me over. I can only figure its being sucked down a hole. Where that hole is, I don't know."

Dot slammed a fist down on the display before her and looked up. "AndrAIa, what's our energy level look like?" 

"We're in safety range, but if more holes are appearing in the city, that could change fast. All it would take would be one hole opening inside the core and we're sunk."

"I'm going up top." Matrix resolved. "Perhaps I can see what's going on in the city from the roof. I'll give you all a report in a nano."

"Okay, be careful." Dot agreed. Matrix clogged out past Mouse, who was on the way in.

Matrix arrived on the roof of the Principle Office. The sky was dark without a sign of processing energy. The city around was dim and uniform as if every building were constructed out of the same caked mud. The white of the functioning Principle Office was nearly blinding in contrast to the rest of Mainframe. He shielded his eyes from below to try and make out details in the city.

To his displeasure he could see holes opening in the streets and buildings nearby. His ears detected the howls of exploding sound as a new stairwell or hallway winched open on the ridge. He hoped the downed bridges would protect them, but the craters were spreading rapidly like a disease. If it kept up like this, they might have to raise the energy shield. 

As he turned to peer off toward Kits he spotted a single lighted speck heading toward him. Ray surfed up shortly to hover next to him on the roof. "The place is starting to go black. Holes were opening all over the Sea when I was down there. It seemed like there were more dark staircases than flat ground all the way here."

Matrix frowned. "I'll bet this variable needs system power to sustain itself. Its looking for more in the city, but because it shut down…"

"That would make sense, our transducer tube was sucked into the black holes in three different places if my count is right." Ray replied. "Including my end. The hose was pulled right out of my hands. The holes are trying to drink up the sea, now, but raw energy is corrosive and I doubt it works as good as formatted system energy."

"We'll have to put up the shield." Matrix resolved.

Ray shook his head. "That might just be baiting the trap."

The two of them headed below, where AndrAIa, Mouse, Welman and Dot were having the same conversation. Mouse put her hands on her hips. "If these holes are energy seeking, a shield will only buy us a little time."

"A little time is all we need." Welman said. "When Bob finishes that file…"

They all looked up when the doors opened. Mouse headed up the stairs to give her search engine a hug. Matrix gave that report he'd promised. "The place is going pitch. I wont be surprised if the city sinks into itself soon, taking us with it."

"I'm putting up the shield." Dot announced. "We'll let these phantom portals chew on our defenses before they start eating our people."

Enzo cocked an eyebrow. "Wouldn't it just spit them back out?"

Matrix groaned. "Where?"

The nano the field was up it was being sucked on by power-hungry holes. The howling outside grew louder, permeating the walls of the War Room. The warped cries were staticky, undoubtedly spawning from the sounds of the sea. The sprites looked to each other. AndrAIa dropped her hands from the console. "We can't do anything about it anymore. We've got no choice but to watch… and wait… and hope we don't fall into darkness."

The shaking began again, softly at first, but growing steadily stronger. AndrAIa could sense the drain of the energy in the building around her. The lights flickered. Matrix came and she clung to him. She thought she'd never see her city in this state again, but here they were, and it had all started with something as small and innocent as a book on a shelf. Enzo found his father and sister, Frisket nosing in under his arm. It seemed dangerous to breathe as the sounds of outside grew louder, the stability beneath their feet weaker, and their sense of safety fainter. AndrAIa closed her eyes. She could imagine the entire city outside shrouded in black, the twisting hallways and walkways an endless maze branching in all directions and going nowhere. She could see the gears spinning, the wires snaking out like hungry fingers clawing at the darkened landscape of Mainframe. She could see them twist together, the different holes holding hands, their tendrils draping like garland. She watched doorways opening in the energy shield itself, draining it, sucking the life force of the city out from the inside. The shield would drop and they'd invade, pockmarknig the hallways, opening beneath the entrenched binomes and numerals, and finally finding them here, the floor giving way and dropping down. Down. Down into that nothingness she'd felt for a moment in the tunnel, only this time there would be no out. There would be no place for the outlet to go. Any space a hole may blow out would only lead to the entrance to another hole sucking in. She'd fall forever. If she clung tight to Matrix maybe they could fall together. If they ever got separated they'd never see one another again, save maybe in passing as one slid down one endless spiral and the other down another. A fall with no end. No impact to wait for, just the inevitable, unending, drop.

The lights flashed. She felt Matrix's heart jump as the room made a violent leap. Bob jumped to his feet on the stairs. He hung onto the banister with one hand, the file extended out at arm's length in the other. His voice was like safety. "Done!" 

AndrAIa's eyes snapped open. They all looked to him. He scrolled down to the very end of the README and read aloud. "End Prog… It's over." Suddenly the file snapped closed and vanished from his hand. He was startled at first and looked around for it, but was distracted by the lights. The consoles jumped back to life, their faces gleaming. AndrAIa could feel a great fog being forced quickly from the room. The air was clean, light, and fresh. She could feel it on her skin and in her lungs. The noise around them stopped completely and everything was still and peaceful like nothing had ever happened at all.

The citizens walked the streets like normal the next cycle. The six sprites stood outside Dot's Diner like always without much concern. Bob looked very proud of himself. "I saved the city yet again."

"Gloat all you want, but it was your fault to start with." Dot reminded him. "Figures you'd pick up the only README in the library that was cursed."

"Not cursed, just poorly formatted." Mouse assured her.

AndrAIa smiled broadly, happy to be able to breathe easy again. "Where'd it go anyway? It just disappeared."

"That's probably what it meant to do all along." Mouse replied. "The variable was declared to make the file delete itself when the reader was done. Unfortunately it had some encoding errors and turned that 'turn to nothing' command on us. It was just an experiment after all."

"You found that all out from your scan?" Matrix asked.

She nodded. "You know what they say about hindsight…"

"Speaking of things passed, you all have to help me with my office." Dot announced. 

Bob gulped. "Your…office?"

Dot put her hands on her hips, going into rant-mode. "I've got the system's worth of junk in there. Apparently my own personal hole was spitting stuff up the entire time we were in the War Room. Matrix said my desk is broken, but who can tell with park benches and who knows what all over the place. I've got cars in there."

AndrAIa interrupted. "You have fun with that, I think this is a good time to leave."

"Leave?" Dot cried.

"Yep, Matrix promised me a vacation if we survived!" AndrAIa announced. "Somewhere nice and static where nothing moves, nothing appears, and the air is clean and free of doom and deletion."

"Sounds heavenly." Mouse mused. Grabbing Ray's arm, she walked out in front of the two vacationers. "I'll tell you what, jump on Ship, we'll escort you."

"You'll what?" Bob asked. "You're going to leave me and the office-"

"Yeah, escort…" Ray agreed, ushering Matrix and AndrAIa to hurry. "Escort and maybe join. Let's get out of here!"

"Wait!" Dot called. 

The four sprites jumped on boards and sped off. Matrix waved over his shoulder. "Have fun, you kids. Have a yard sale or something!"

AndrAIa's laugh lit the air. "Seeya!" She soared off over her beautiful city, shining and flawless underneath a healthy blue sky. It was like coming out of one of those awful hallways; a moment of euphoria, and she knew it would be here when she got back.

End Prog.


End file.
